


Brave

by Tiika



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Insecurity, Light Angst, Unreliable Narrator, spoilers for episode 49
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 21:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiika/pseuds/Tiika
Summary: Here's the thing: Fjord is not a brave man.





	Brave

Here’s the thing: Fjord is not a brave man. 

He pretends that he is whenever anyone’s watching. “Fake it ‘till you make it” is practically his way of life at this point, _and_, he thinks in moments of painful honesty in the middle of the night, _it always has been._ He’s been trying to be something, some_one_ other than himself since he was a kid, after all. 

In a way, he almost feels like he’s succeeding, lately. He wasn’t powerful, and now he is, with powerful magic and powerful friends–and he has friends now, which is another new thing that the old Fjord didn't have. He had, or has, depending on who you ask, a boat, and a captaincy, although he never could have predicted how he got either in any of his wildest dreams. He’s even got a new accent, for this new him. He’s almost an entirely new person.

Almost.

Because, again, here’s the thing–

Fjord is not brave. He’s not brave, and he’s not really powerful, because he has no idea what he’s doing or what he wants, and maybe even less of an idea than he had before their weeks at sea. He’s no real authority figure, and he had no idea how to be a captain, in truth, and he knows that it won’t take too many more slip-ups before the rest of the Nein recognize his real accent, and then they’ll see through the rest of him, too, and then he won’t even have them anymore.

_ Maybe it won’t even take that _ , whispers the voice in the back of his head that still sounds like the real him. Maybe they’ll finally see what Fjord isn’t–he’s not strong, he’s not very smart (he still regrets the "happy fun ball", although he tries not to show it), and he’s probably not even  _ good _ anymore.

(He can still hear everyone’s worries from the second temple–”don’t turn evil,” they’d said. Fjord spends a lot of time worrying, himself, about if it was already too late by then.)

  
  


And then they get to Felderwin, and they find the ashes of an alchemy shop, and they stand by a river and listen as Nott talks.

And when she says “not pretty and not brave and not coordinated and not smart, and just  _ not, _ ” it takes every last scrap of lying and pretending that Fjord has to not break down, to keep up the facade of the reaction that they would all expect him to have. And when they’re in the tunnels, he talks to Nott about drowning, because they all know that he knows what it feels like to drown, so it’s the safe, easy way out, so much safer and easier than saying  _ maybe I should be named Nott instead of you _ because at the very least, Nott, the Brave, has earned her comma.

And deep down inside, Fjord is not a brave man.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing catch-up, and just finished episode 50. Knowing what I know about future episodes, the need to bang out this little character study slammed me in the chest. I deeply love this bastard man and his parallels with Nott.


End file.
